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Tuesday, December 22, 2015

MOST NEW YORK CITY ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS ARE VIOLATING DISABILITIES ACT, FEDERAL INVESTIGATION FINDS

DEC. 21, 2015 ::A
two-year federal investigation has concluded that 83 percent of New York City’s
public elementary schools are not “fully accessible” to children with
disabilities, in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

In a blistering letter to the Education
Department’s top lawyer on Monday, the office of Preet Bharara, the United States
attorney for the Southern District of New York, said that the investigation
also showed that six school districts, which serve more than 50,000 elementary
students, did not have a single school that is fully accessible.

“Nowhere is it more important to tear down the barriers to
equal access than with respect to the education of our children,” Mr. Bharara’s
office said. “But today, in New York City, 25 years after passage of the
A.D.A., children with physical disabilities still do not have equal access to
this most fundamental of rights.”

Mr. Bharara, in a brief statement, said his office had asked
the city for a response to the findings, “including an outline and timeline of
corrective actions that will remedy this unacceptable state of affairs.”

The 14-page letter gives the city 30
days to provide a response. The investigation had not been previously disclosed
publicly.

Harry Hartfield, a spokesman for the Education
Department, said the department was reviewing the letter and remained
“committed to increasing the accessibility of our school buildings.”

Mr. Hartfield said that the department had been cooperating
with the investigation, and that as part of its most recent capital plan, it
had set aside $100 million for accessibility projects.

“Our goal is to ensure that all our students have access to
a high-quality education, and a student’s disability should never get in the
way of their access to a great school,” Mr. Hartfield said.

In the letter, which was addressed to the department’s
general counsel, Courtenaye Jackson-Chase, the government said the disabilities
law reflected a “comprehensive mandate” to eliminate what had become pervasive
discrimination against people with disabilities, which denied them equal access
to “critically important government services and programs.”

“Our investigation found that New York City’s elementary
schools still are not ‘readily accessible to and usable by’ individuals with
disabilities,” Mr. Bharara’s office wrote, “a population which includes not
only students, but teachers and family members as well.”

The letter described the effect the violations had on
families. Mr. Bharara’s office said that it had spoken with one family that had
gone to what the prosecutors called “extreme measures” to keep a daughter
enrolled in her local school, rather than subject her to a lengthy commute to
the closest “accessible” school.

“A parent of this elementary school child was forced to
travel to the school multiple times a day, every school day, in order to carry
her child up and down stairs to her classroom, to the cafeteria, and to other
areas of the school in which classes and programs were held,” the government
wrote.

The alternative for children with mobility impairments was
for the students to spend significant time traveling to a school that could
accommodate their physical disabilities, the letter said.

“Requiring elementary students with disabilities to travel
extensively at the beginning and end of each school day — a condition which is
not imposed upon their peers — can impose particularly onerous physical demands
on these children,” the government wrote.

The city had also not complied with the requirements of the
disabilities law as to alterations made in schools since 1992, when the law
went into effect, the letter noted.

In what it described as the most “glaring example of the
city’s failure,” the letter cited the construction of an addition to a school
in Queens in 2000 that was “riddled with inaccessible features,” like an
elevator that was not the proper width, and noncompliant door knobs, bathroom
“grab bars,” drinking fountains, sinks and faucets. The school also lacked
visual alarms in classrooms, as required.

“The city’s failure to consider the needs of individuals with
disabilities when upgrading and renovating its existing facilities is
inexcusable,” the government said in the letter, which was signed by two senior
lawyers in the office’s civil rights unit, Lara K. Eshkenazi and Jeannette A.
Vargas.

Mr. Bharara’s letter was accompanied by a 73-page
submission that offered a detailed list of violations in 11 schools across
the boroughs, 10 of which the city had designated as “not accessible” and one
it described as “functionally accessible.”

But the school designated as “functionally accessible”
lacked “certain crucial accessible features,” the letter said, “raising a
serious question as to the accuracy of the city’s categorizations.”

In each of the 11 schools, the report said, the
investigation identified alterations made after 1992 that were not compliant
with the A.D.A., including fire alarm systems, door hardware, toilet
partitions, cafeteria seating, main office counters, library furniture and
playground areas.

In its letter, Mr. Bharara’s office included four pages of
what it said were the “minimum actions necessary” to remedy the violations. As
an initial matter, the letter said, the city must develop a comprehensive plan
to survey all elementary schools and recommend a systemwide remediation plan to
address the lack of accessibility.

“The city should make it a priority to increase the
accessibility of the first floors of school buildings and the rooms used by all
students, teachers, parents or other visitors to the schools,” the letter said.